This book explores the relationship between cities and their commercial
airports. These vital transportation facilities are locally owned and
managed and civic leaders and boosters have made them central to often
expansive economic development dreams, including the construction of
architecturally significant buildings. However, other metropolitan
residents have paid a high price for the expansion of air
transportation, as battles over jet aircraft noise resulted not only in
quieter jet engine technologies, but profound changes in the
metropolitan landscape with the clearance of both urban and suburban
neighborhoods. And in the wake of 9/11, the US commercial airport has
emerged as the place where Americans most fully experience the security
regime introduced after those terrorist attacks.